book details

Book: Professor Kompressor by Nils Andersson

Nils Andersson

about this book: I didn't really intend to write this book. Actually, I probably didn't think I had it in me. It started with my daughter asking for stories at bedtime, so… we made up Professor Kompressor, a somewhat accident-prone inventor. We agreed that he should be excellent at inventing, but the inventions would not always be excellent. This became the tag-line for the stories, which had to be short enough to be finished at one evening's bedtime and absolutely had to be a little bit unpredictable. Because of my other life (as a physicist working on Einstein's theory of gravity, black holes and stuff), the episodes often ended up drawing on some idea from science, usually bending it out of shape to make it more entertaining.

After a while, I decided to try to write the ideas down. I still had no idea that this would lead to an actual book, but I enjoyed the creative part of the writing and it was exciting to try to make the rather loose stories hang together. I faced a massive learning curve because, even though I do a lot of writing in my professional life it is hardly fiction and the intended audience is rather different.

The stories are aimed at children in the age range 8-12 or so, but should also entertain parents that might be asked to do the reading.

After finishing the book, I left it on my hard disk for more than six months. Eventually, I had the courage to make it public.

I have read this book many times (obviously), and I actually rather like it (surprise!). It may not be perfect, but there are quite a few funny bits in it and there is some very exciting science behind some of it.

If there is a take-home message, I guess it could be that you can have a whole lot of fun with science. Provided you are prepared to bend the rules… just a little bit…